Under her designation of “Systems and Structures,” Andrea Ferrigno plots the stratosphere in graphite. In dizzying constellations, like the drawing “Static Search,” delicate contours arc from one dark polestar to another. Passages compress and then re-open as they flow across…
Dan Devening’s work is a meticulous hybrid of disciplinary practices. He treads the periphery of painting, collage, graphic design and architecture, looking for new paths between demonstrated customs and proven structures.
Although Chicago’s art schools and museums attract thousands of students and visitors annually, emerging and even mid-career artists have always struggled to capture an appropriate degree of that attention. There wasn’t always a deep reservoir of writers, venturesome collectors, or…
In the fall of 1983, I co-organized a summer program at the Oxbow Artists Residency in Saugatuck, Mich., a historic center with old ties to the Chicago art community. My partner was Ken Isaacs, an architect and professor at the…
The catalog essays that support the exhibition “What Came After: Figurative Painting in Chicago 1978 – 1998” at the Elmhurst Art Museum, question whether the term “Imagism” is fitting for art predominately recognized as Chicago-born. They also question whether Imagism…
On Nov. 7, the Illinois Women Artists Project will host its Fifth biennial symposium at Bradley University, “Champions of the Environment, 1960s to the Present.” The subject is environmental activism, and it’s an event that shouldn’t be missed if you…
Jonathan Higgins, artist and master printmaker and his wife printmaker Sarah Smelser have owned Manneken Press in Bloomington, Illinois, for 17 years. The press was founded in 2000 in Morgantown, W.Va., as an independent press where Sarah landed her first…
Founded in 1967, the Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wis., is one of the most innovative and uncoventionally curated museums in the country. Many modestly sized museums such as the Kohler that have a contemporary art agenda and/or research mission…
Co-curators Robert Sill, Douglas Stapleton and Edward Maldanado note that Thomas Skomski’s solo show “Urgent Care: Stuck in that Awkward Stage between Birth and Death” at the Illinois State Museum in Springfield “examines the processes of change and the inevitable…
Designer, photographer and now hand-made book artist and printmaker Robert Rowe came to Bradley University from Marshall University in Huntington, W. Va., in 2000. During his 20 years in Huntington, Robert served as the head of graphic design and photography…
